The Electoral Commission estimates that eight million people are missing from the electoral register. The people missing are disproportionately those who are young, private renters and from minority ethnic communities. This is because the registration system was designed in a way which makes it easier for long-term residents, especially more affluent homeowners, to register. We could and should design a better system, without these biases.
First, if you are not registered to vote, you should register (and encourage anyone else not on the register too!)
There are local elections coming up on 1 May 2025. That means people have until Friday 11th April to register. You can register online or with a downloaded paper form. It takes about 5 minutes, and those registering will need to know their address and National Insurance number.
Who are we missing?
In 2000, the estimated gap between the number entitled to vote and registered to vote was between 0.5 and 1 million – a number that was viewed as scandalous at the time. Today, the gap is around 8 million, and it is disadvantaged groups who are excluded.
- 6 in 10 adults under 20 are not registered to vote
- 1 in 4 adults under 35 are not registered to vote (but 19 out of 20 over-65s are registered)
- 1 in 4 Black and Asian adults are not registered to vote
- 1 in 4 private renters are not registered to vote (but 19 out of 20 owner occupiers are registered)
It is worth noting that each of the characteristics that are linked with being absent from the electoral roll – being a young adult, living in private rented accommodation and having a non-white ethnicity – are also associated with higher levels of poverty, food insecurity and destitution. These are the people who politics is serving badly, whose voice is often absent when policy is being discussed, and who are missing from the electoral rolls, therefore unable to vote for their preferred political representative.
All too often, the first instinct is to assume the people absent from the roll just can’t be bothered. The problem with that hypothesis is you must believe people have got 8 to 16 times less bothered over the past 25 years, since under-registration has soared from 0.5-1million all the way to 8 million. You also must believe that multiple rounds of reforms, which have added complexity to registration procedures, especially for those moving house, have had no effect.
Just one example: over the past ten years, the number of “attainers” – those aged 16 to 17 who will reach voting age during the lifetime of the electoral register – dropped from 380k registered in 2013 to 121K in 2023. This drop of two thirds had its sharpest fall in 2014, when the government of the time introduced a more complex individual registration scheme.
Why does it matter?
There is an obvious fairness issue. Why should we design registration systems that disadvantage the already disadvantaged? Why should some have an easier pathway to their vote than others?
The view held by our Churches, that all are made equally in God’s image, is a key reason to support a democratic system. That reasoning is undermined the system denies or impedes the votes of some – especially the disadvantaged.
What can we do?
The UK’s electoral system is an outlier in many ways. Most liberal democracies have an automatic registration system. You don’t need to register to vote: the government uses the data it already has (benefits, pensions, local taxation, etc) to register you automatically. For those who think they may be missed off, there are often ways of checking and of simply registering when an election called.
For countries where registration is not automatic, the process is often simpler and with more assistance. For example, unlike many other nations, there is currently no immediate way of checking if you are on the register. This can create uncertainty for voters as well as problems for registrars who try to prevent people’s registrations being duplicated.
In January, the Welsh Senedd agreed to trial automatic voter registration for a number of local authorities. If the results follow international precedents, they will show improved registration rates. We look forward to the findings and, if successful, to other parts of the UK following suit.
For too long, our politicians have focused on the miniscule problem of fraud by impersonation at polling stations while ignoring the growing problem of an increasingly biased and incomplete electoral roll. Please register to vote, encourage your friends and other members of your church to register to vote – but then demand we get a better registration system.
Find out if you are in an area with local elections on 1 May and encourage your church congregation to register by midnight on Friday the 11th of April.
For more info on the Local Elections and how your church can respond visit our Local Elections 2025 webpage:
